History Will Soon Resume

Belmont Club:

Historically, the EU owes its very existence to the fact that America, with its "continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military" kept the Soviet Union from overrunning it. It is questionable whether Europe could today even obtain oil supplies from the Middle East or maintain freedom of navigation in the vital waters like the Persian Gulf (remember HMS Cornwall?) without America, with its "continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military".

It's quite something: most Europeans living today have, historically speaking, a distorted view of reality. They've lived in their American-subsidized peace bubble for too long. They think that calling the Iranians, Syrians or the North Koreans evil is the problem. Bush having a comic book view of the world is the problem. America is the problem.

All we have to do is sit down and have a little tea and biscuits with those misunderstood regimes and it'll all be peachy.

These people don't learn from history because they think that they've "progressed" beyond the savage past. They'll learn the hard way.

Comments

[Josh Scholar]

We didn't protect them because our hearts are full of love. We protected them because the alternative was that the nations that fought WWI and WWII would all have their own nukes, and that sounded like suicide.

Lefties may love anti-proliferation treaties and hate the cold war, but the cold war was a sort of anti-proliferation action itself.

[Isaac Schrödinger]

Quite right.

In addition: Americans, and also Canadians, have the luxury of distance. By the time a foreign menace rears its head and causes mayhem, we can prepare, mobilize and protect ourselves.

That's another oddity today. Europe will be the first fully-Western territory to take the brunt of the Jihad. Yet, it is they who are the least connected to reality.

We see that they are in great peril but they largely see us as the threat!

[David Boxenhorn]

Korea has the same problem.

But I think you're wrong, they won't learn. Big bad America will save them yet again.

[The Jut]

How incredibly simplified. Growing up being a kid in the 80s, I was certain that I would've been wiped out by a nuclear war between the Soviets and America by now. Actually, today I'm twice as old as I ever thought I'd be. And I'm only in my late 20s. Americans have no idea of the kind of fatalism necessary to live through cold war Europe. When the wall fell, it was seen as nothing short of a miracle. Today's situation is still nothing compared to what we thought then.

[David Boxenhorn]

Today's situation is still nothing compared to what we thought then.

True, this time Europe really can defend itself. Yet it chooses not to.

[Josh Scholar]

Jut, I understand now, but did not, then, that we appeared insane on purpose.

The problem is that, rationally, it made no sense for America to start a nuclear war just to stop an invasion of Europe. America would be committing suicide in that case. And suicide is never rational.

So in order to convince the Soviets not to attack, we had to put on a convincing front of being fanatical and completely out of control. We did that. "We" being the American political class.

But doing that, we emersed the world in the image of a fanatical, irrational, nuclear armed America. A nightmare of an image. And the whole world believed it.

If we were more freightened of America than of the Soviets, well that's perfection as far as propaganda goes.

But no wonder the world still fears and hates America. I lived through that fear too, I believed it too.

[Josh Scholar]

It seems a shame to many who are most worried about the triumphalism Islam, but a couple of generations that grew up in the shadow of that panic aren't willing to reinstate it.

And maybe they're right. It may be that in a democracy, one can't put on a show of being a berzerker without becoming one. Ie, you can't seem trigger happy without being trigger happy.